How to solve crosswords

Last month I wrote about the contribution to cryptic clues from cricket, football and golf. Other physical activities also appear, but to a lesser extent. You need to know, at least, that "bully" is a verb in hockey; that ice hockey is played with a puck; that in archery the target consists of concentric circles, called bulls, inners and outers; that the square area for a bout in boxing is a ring; and that, while pairs, fours and eights may be cards, they may also be rowing boats. Here is an Araucaria clue that depends on the fact that in 1869 the Marquis of Queensberry gave his name to the rules that have regulated boxing ever since. One was that you must not hit below the belt. "Most of my pants are against regulations (5,3,4)" Answer: BELOW THE BELT.

Sedentary games also feature, particularly bridge. You need to know that a pack of cards has "suits" (clubs, diamonds, hearts and spades). You can also "come up trumps". The players are conventionally called North, South, East and West. So "partners" in a clue can lead to N with S or E with W and "opponents" to N or S with E or W. Taking all (13) tricks in a single game is a "grand slam", which can also appear in a clue involving tennis or rugby union, though then more than one game is involved. The pieces and men from the chess board are further regulars (K, Q, B, N, R and P).

A related contribution from the world of games is the names of sporting heroes, alive and dead. These are usually confined to those sufficiently famous or infamous to have made it out of the sports pages and into the main news. In other words, you need not necessarily be interested in what they played to have heard of them.

The cast list of these sports-persons, of course, changes over time. Henry Cotton (1907-87, three times British Open golf champion) has now dropped out, as has Nobby Stiles of England's 1966 World Cup-winning team. But Jack Nicklaus is still in there with Tiger Woods.

Also still active are Babe Ruth (714 home runs, a record that stood until 1974), Rocky Marciano (the world heavyweight champion until 1956, who won all his 49 professional fights), Muhammad Ali/Cassius Clay, Don Bradman, WG Grace, Jesse Owens and many other greats. As a rule of thumb, their chances of survival seem to improve if their names are short. Thus Ernie Els, the South African golfer, will probably have a long crossword shelf life. Here he is in a recent Bonxie clue on the website: "Burden of golfer upset about total (6)." Answer: SADDLE (ELS reversed round ADD).

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About this article

Hugh Stephenson: How to solve crosswords

This article was published on
the Guardian website
at 19.00 EDT on Sunday 23 April 2006.
It was last modified at 15.01 EDT on Monday 19 May 2014.
It was first published at 09.18 EST on Friday 12 February 2010.